Invisible Leavings

And they will believe in fate; good and evil... This week's strong message is "everything happens for a reason". I keep seeing and hearing it in different semantic variations everywhere: in Netflix shows, people's texts, social media, even within the whispers of my own inner voice. Last night I came that much closer to understanding the concept, and the feeling was so peaceful. Accepting this concept is probably the key to long-term peace. That's not to say we don't need a r eminder every now and then. Just think of all the events that had to line up perfectly one after the other, and in parallel to countless others, since the Big Bang, so that you, today, can be alive. Some people say the universe's creation was an anomaly in a vast sea of high entropy. A fluke of random luck. But then, how far did the universe need to go to cut all those corners on being "random", on such a systematic and precise level for things to evolve just...

So before I met certain people and got particularly educated in a certain way, I used to think of myself the way my family, most friends, some coworkers, and my ex husband described me: difficult. From an early age, I had resigned myself to that description and let it be a fact; a basis for questioning whether I was worthy of any kind of social acceptance, big or small. Now, I know better. What I am is a person who is not neuro-typical . This is a fact, a real one this time, and no matter how hard, how well and how long I've tried to hide it, it remains me. I am never going to not panic when I hear a high pitched voice, or a repetitive sound, or things strewn on the floor of a house, or a crowd of people, to name but a few examples of what I've recently come to call my OCD reactions. (Before, I called them "interference"). As a child, I'd engage in long periods of isolation and repetitive motions to self soothe. Of course, I was told that such behavio...

If I were a novice monk, abandoned by my father, this may be a letter I wrote to God on Father’s Day after some years of pondering the meaning of fatherhood and the flawed nature of all human relationships… Praise be to the Holy Father, the Giver, the Kind...the Lord of the Worlds. So, my Lord, we humans decided to have a Father’s Day to celebrate those paternal figures we hold dear and near. A day in which we honour all fathers alive, and remember those who passed. It's also a day for mourning those fathers we never knew, as well as those who’ve let us down. Those who stayed, and those who decided to leave us behind. This, my Lord, is a day most challenging for some of us. You see, my Lord, no father is perfect, and therein lies the problem. But then again, You already know that, don’t You? You made sure that no father is as perfect as You, and that no human could ever be as whole and complete as they ever need to be. You made us flawed, my Lord, and today I pau...

This was sometime during May 2018… So here’s the thing. I can’t remember the last time I was completely taken with a blondie. Oh wait, that was never actually. I’ve never, and I mean never, imagined I’d be attracted (and so much so for that matter) to someone so physically different and just totally on the opposite side of what i have so far thought of as my “type”. I admit I’m surprised at myself. But there’s no denying it - I’m hooked. May have been since moment one, come to think of it. Confidence, a clear voice, humor, mischief, and oh those beautiful eyes may be some of what caught my eye that night at the party. But since I’ve got closer to this person, more things rise to the surface, such as maybe a hint of kindness and some deliciously boyish gestures. It doesn’t feel like a rhetoric question when he asks how I’ve been - it could be just politeness but I don’t know...it feels real. And one day while we were talking about work, I stupidly locked onto his eyes fo...

The smell of the Arm's salt wafts stubbornly on the breeze, through the medley of scents emanating from the food stalls lining the waterfront. Of all those aromas, she craves the salt the most; it's a tantalizing reminder of Alexandria's Mediterranean. Even despite the Arm's stately calm being sharply at odds with the raging waves she knew were crashing relentlessly on the coast of Egypt's northern city. She envisioned the shape of the water beneath that calm surface, and wo ndered if it possibly belied a swift current. A passion for human companionship, a desire to talk perhaps. A desire to entrap, ensnare and seduce. A cold, casual slap after you've trusted the warmth of that salt on the air. The horizon held a weak morning light. In her Book, sleep was described as a "small death". Despite that darker name, that was an embrace she knew was kind, and her dreams rather more lit than most mornings. Dreams can be beautiful, when they're y...

There’s something about contemplating your hands that is profoundly grounding. They’re such a delicate part of your body, when you think how easily they can be injured for instance. Yet they do such monumental tasks every day. The phrase “prepared with loving hands” comes to mind, and the first picture in my head is: meals. But it's not just the pretty pancakes, pastas and salads of our everyday meals that I envision; there’s also the scald of hot water during the first seconds of dishwashing before I’ve balanced the water’s temperature, the scrape of the knife’s edge against my nails if my hands are shaking after a long day at work, or the hiss of a paper cut on my finger tip when I pull out aluminum sheets too fast during the early morning scramble out of the house. I look at my cuticles now, my knuckles, my shapeless nails, the remnants of bruises and cuts and burns all over the skin of my hands. This is skin that has seen better days, and will continue to see more hards...

2:00 am: I'm rocking my five month old baby to stop her fussing, which she is threatening to turn into a full-fledged shrieking. I'm in the living room with the door closed and I keep giving it furtive glances to check that it stays closed. It is important that it stays closed. Because if that door is closed, then so is his - the kids' bedroom that he took to sleeping in.  He cannot be woken. Please God he cannot be woken. 2:30 am: It's hot in the living room, and I'm feeling stifled with all the energy coming from the TV. The sound is turned down and the baby is not fussing anymore but she's wide awake and expects all the attention in the world. If I get too absorbed in the show, she makes sure she is loud enough to regain my focus. It's getting harder to stay awake… Focus on her, I tell myself, stay awake, keep the doors closed, hang on, she'll get sleepy soon. 3:11 am: I changed her diaper. Again. Back on the...